| (BOOK) STRUGGLE SUNDAY | The excruciating waiting for a new book release.. it s*cks

| (BOOK) STRUGGLE SUNDAY | The excruciating waiting for a new book release.. it s*cks

Every reader out there experiences this; the waiting around for a new release. And I can really, really do without all that waiting haha. That ‘soul crushin’, aching feeling when you’re waiting for a book to release you’re highly anticipating. You need that book and you NEED IT NOW. The feeling you can’t go on another day without having that particular book in your hands and being able to read it – okay, a bit on the dramatic side here but you get me right? lol.

It happens often for me; finishing a book and end up having a major book hangover. Knowing you’ll still have to wait a long, long time for it’s sequel – if there is one – is excruciating!!! Waiting a whole year for a new release is quite common and sometimes even 2 years – the HORROR. Yeah, waiting for a release isn’t my strong suit haha and it’s a downright STRUGGLE for me.

I experience several stages while I’m finishing a book and get sucked into that ‘waiting period for a new release’, let me tell you what I mean. I came across an article from Huffington Post and it’s SO ME, so I just had to share it with you haha. And I love to hear about your experience on this topic.

STAGE 1. You complete the latest book

After a weekend holed up in your bedroom, you’ve finally finished the book. It’s bittersweet. You’re reluctant to set the book down, and re-read the final sentence several times before doing so – or in my case, often entire chapters, lol.

STAGE 2. You bond with other fans

You immediately call all of your friends who have been pestering you to get through the latest book. You can’t BELIEVE the protagonist would do such a thing!

STAGE 3. Withdrawal sets in

To get your fix, you search for author interviews, fan forums, any source that could possibly bestow you with further info about the series. For a while, it works. But it’s not enough.

STAGE 4. The emptiness begins to overwhelm you

How are you supposed to fill this gaping void?! You look everywhere for anything with a remote connection to the series, including Amazon’s wonky “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” recommendations, and, okay, maybe also some fan fiction.

STAGE 5. You start to recover

You’ve hit rock bottom, and yet life continues. You’ve begun to kick the habit of spending all of your free time tracking down weird fan esoterica. It’s arguable that you’re on your way to normalcy. You even went outside!

STAGE 6. An excerpt from the next book is released!

This is wonderful news! You stop whatever you’re doing and read the excerpt immediately. And then promptly continue to freak out all over again.

STAGE 7. A release date is set, and time slows down

Wait. What. The release date is pegged to next year? Only 262974.5 minutes to go! You begin to think of other benchmarks and activities to look forward to in the meantime; at least there are two three-day weekends and a wedding to tide you over. Right? Right?!

STAGE 8. You begin to strategize

You begin to plot out the quickest way to get your hands on a copy when it does finally come out. Do you pre-order on Amazon? Do you camp out in front of your local bookstore? Do you pester the author incessantly to send you a copy in advance because you are literally his or her biggest fan of all time? All of the above? Decisions, decisions.

STAGE 9. At long last, the book has arrived!

Read slowly. Repeat steps one through eight.

READING SPOILERS AHEAD; YAY or NAY?
Another struggle related to waiting for a release.

Often before or right after a release, spoilers are released. This was the case for example with Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas there were links on tumblr with pictres of entire scenes from the book. Normalle: I HATE spoilers. But I made an exception with this haha. I was waiting so long for this book to be published, I had so many questions unanswered after Queen of Shadows that it kind of turned me into a raving lunatic-fangirl, lol. So, a week before it’s release – And I hear you say: ahw, couldn’t you just wait one more week? NOPE. IT’S A WHOLE FFFFING WEEK?! THAT’S 7 DAYS.. Each day feels like a year haha. So when I got those Tumblr links from a friend, I just HAD to take a peek and read.. So, quite some answers were found even before I’ve held the book in my hands myself. Did I regret it? Not one second haha. It really helped lessen the agony of waiting – took the edge off a little 😉

How do you feel about spoilers? Normally, I’m completely AGAINST them. But with Empire of Storms, I just didn’t have any choice – okay technically I did, but my fangirl heart thought otherwise. It was a soul-deep need I couldn’t fight against. Did you experience such things? Becoming so NEEDY that you just Wanted to read spoilers? Or is there something seriously wrong with me here? LOL haha.

WAITING FOR A SERIES TO BE COMPLETED.

There’s of course, always the option to wait until a series is completely finished and published. In that case, you can binge-read the whole thing and you don’t have to suffer while waiting a year in between releases. Buttt, you Do have to suffer while waiting YEARS for everything to be completed and see and hear a lot of book buddies rant about popular books. I seriously don’t understand how people are able to wait for a series to be finished if it’s a series you’re highly anticipating. My sister does this for example. I recently made the mistake of pressing her into buying and reading Paper Princess by Erin Watt. She reads only Dutch books, so she’s, aside from waiting on regular releases, also dependant on publishers and them translating a new book in a series which often takes at least a couple of months after the English release. So, she started reading Paper Princess and it was like mid-October I guess? And then she finished it and she was completely fangirling how awesome the book was and such.. and then: I need book 2. And THEN.. she saw the book wasn’t due to release until October 31st. And THEN… I regretted pushing her into buying the book buwhahaha because she was seriously pissed off that I didn’t tell her the series wasn’t completely translated yet – big oops. And book three isn’t due to release in March 2018 I guess? So yeah.. she hates my guts for that buwhaha. So yeah, she likes waiting for a series to be completely finished and then binge-read the whole thing. If she knows beforehand there’s more to come, she doesn’t start reading, she’s very disciplined when it comes to that – don’t know HOW she accomplishes this, but she does.

A lot of readers like to not-binge-read and read other books in between. For those readers, reading other books can be a great helpful way to make the agony of waiting for a new release lessen. I’m one of those incredibly impatient readers who can be bummed out about it for days or sometimes even weeks or months, knowing I’ll have to wait a whole damn year for a new book in a favorite series or a new book from a favorite author in general. Sure, I’ll read other stuff and I fall in love with other books – and the cycle continues, lol. But I just love binge-reading and it always KILLS me when I finish a book with an open ending, knowing there’s more to come and I’ll have to wait. IT.JUST.KILLS.ME

The only thing that helps lessen the agony for me, is to dive into another book(world) and distract myself. Often I don’t think about that first book – sure, I have my outbursts now and then when I have a complete mental breakdown when I realize again how long I still have to wait but in general, new reads can be a good distraction haha – because my focus is then elsewhere. But the downside is that this cycle keeps repeating itself haha. Because new reads have the same effect; if the book is awesome, you’ll have to wait for this one’s sequel as well so yeah; here we go again. Stupid BOOKHANGOVERS; waiting in my burrito of sadness for a new release.

Do you have struggles waiting for new releases or do you find enough distractions with other reads so you don’t have a problem with it? Love to hear your thoughts on this!

This is a terribly cute post Melissa!! You got this from Huffington Post? Any way I actually LOVE the section where you read spoilers because lah I do that… I try to resist so bad but yup I sneak them sometimes… because one readers spoiler is another reader’s anticipation! ❤